Ken McGuire

KilkennyMusic.com Relaunches

Been a quiet week in the blogging sense as literally all my spare time during the week has gone into relaunching KilkennyMusic.com. The site had previously been working on a PHPNuke 7.8 install with phpBB integrated for the forums…. no more!

After pulling the site down last Tuesday in the very wee hours of the morning, it has relaunched this morning on a Joomla install. Most of the work involved was in getting all the users and forum posts migrated to the new setup, then spending a good bit of time templating up the site (and the forums to match) before getting all the components installed.

For anyone who is interested, the site is running the latest version of Joomla with the latest version of phpBB backing the forums. Community Builder looks after the members and integrates well with the forums. That too has had a bit of work done to it to cater for pulling in users posts from the forums, linking their avatars, providing each member with their own homepage and guestbook setup (MySpace comments style). There’s a new free classifieds area, post up some photos, sell your bits and pieces. The photo galleries and Artists Area of the site have been revamped thanks to some new components (thought slightly lacking in content as I’ve to load the backups in today). There’s new live chat features, blogs, podcasts going in this week, free mp3 downloads, KKM radio… and more besides!

The site now also boasts our new online magazine, ‘Sound System’ which has been made free to non-members as well, we’ve got interviews from some nice bands on the horizon (Laminate, Republic Of Loose, Fugazi, Yo La Tengo and more), a few new writers on board (or just people who were on board before but are now adopting a writers position as well) and overall the site – performance-wise and user-wise has improved a hell of a lot from its PHPNuke incarnation last week.

If you’re interested in the music, or you’re based in Kilkenny, do drop in and register – its free!

My thanks to everyone involved in KKM with me behind the scenes, to all the bands that have joined us for live sets during the past 12 months, to the Kilkenny Arts Office and the Arts Council for approving KKM for the Arts Acts Grant for 2006 and to everyone else that we’ve met along the way.

Why the relaunch?

We turned 1 year old on September 19th… gotta put something nice on for your birthday! Maybe now I can actually get to bed at a decent hour!